How do companies prevent money laundering?

Quite an open-ended question. Most companies may know or not know that they are laundering money. One of the most important investments a company can make is to ensure that all those dealing with money, undergo AML awareness training.

To give you an analogy if you’re looking at a very large color pallet and you’ve never been told that such and such colors are ‘neon’ and such and such colors are ‘earthy’ etc. you never would have guessed.

The same analogy applies to money laundering: Awareness education. If you’ve never been educated about money laundering it becomes inherently very difficult to spot it, question it, detect it, mitigate it and report it.

Companies today stop money laundering by making sure those who deal with money, and even in some cases the senior management, undergo some kind of anti-money laundering training.

Once you have the basic knowledge, you are able to question a lot many transactions. Some companies make it mandatory that accountants, internal auditors, etc. have undergone substantive AML/CFT/etc. training.

In addition to this, the software used by external auditors and in some cases banks also can detect basic patterns of money laundering, etc.

The software systems, etc. you put in play are just tools of the trade. Real understanding comes from understanding your weak/vulnerable points and then implementing a compliance program that aims to eradicate such weaknesses and makes sure everyone concerned is in sync.